Monday, September 29, 2008

Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins

Just One of the Guys is the story about Chastity Virginia O'Neill, youngest child and only daughter in a clan of five children. Standing at nearly six feet tall, she's always just been one of the guys, a tomboy, tagging along after her brothers. A journalist for the local newspaper, Chastity meets a local doctor and things seem to be going pretty well.

Enter Trevor Meade, family friend and her first love. Though things have seemed to cool down between the two of them, Chastity still loves him, though he still sees her as a friend. Will she find happily ever after, or will she always be just one of the guys?

I have enjoyed Kristan Higgins previous books, Fools Rush In and Catch of the Day. As in the previous two books, the setting is the Northeast, in this case upstate New York. Higgins writes a rich setting in a small town, with everyone getting their happily ever after.

The secondary characters in the story are delightful, probably more so than the main character. My main issue with the book is how the secondary characters are much stronger and tend to overshadow Chastity. I actually wanted to know more about them. The doctor was also painted two-dimensionally, and I had a very hard time liking him. He wasn't a bad guy, he was just a caricature. From the beginning, we know who Higgins wants Chastity to end up with, and it's not the doctor.

The book reads more like a chick lit than a romance. As with the previous two books, the heroine's love for a certain man seems doomed, but works out fine in the end.